Well now with the witness of Lucian of Samosata we have the ultimate witness that it was someone AFTER Polycarp who was correcting and developing 'letters' associated with his person. That's why I cited the whole article. Once we know that Lucian and the Martyrdom of Polycarp are reporting on the same historical incident the reference at the end of the Passing of Peregrinus becomes utterly significant. The one where Lucian mockingly reflects upon influence of the “stranger” not only upon the many the witnesses at Olympia but:
also to the other Greeks, to whom he said he had sent letters. The story is that he dispatched missives to almost all the famous cities—testamentary dispositions, so to speak, and exhortations and prescriptions—and he appointed a number of ambassadors for this purpose from among his comrades, styling them " messengers from the dead" and "underworld couriers.”
As I wrote in the 'corrected' article (this section was added by me AFTER Detering published the online version of the text):
Lightfoot rightly notes that these words represent clear citations from the Ignatian corpus. Yet what is “Peregrinus” doing sending out these letters, you ask? We will see shortly that this corpus is directly identified as being Polycarp’s historical handiwork.
Lucian uses the connection between “Peregrinus” and “Ignatius” to prove what I said earlier – namely that the forged epistles were employed as part of a letter writing campaign throughout Greece to support the foundation of a new Church. Morte sees the martyrdom of its maniacal “stranger” as the last part of a master plan to subvert the pre-existent Christian community. Lucian ridicules this “poor wretch” identifying him not only as a liar but one who “did and said everything with a view to glory and the praise of the multitude, even to the extent of leaping into fire.”
He is left with one question – why would this madman have carried such a thing? Why forge epistles in another man’s name (a man whose name “Ignatius” interestingly means “burning one” or “angel of the presence”)? Even if all these things did accomplish the intended purpose of subverting the established (Marcionite) Church why carry it out given that he “was sure not to enjoy the praise because he could not hear it”?
Why go through all this anonymous forgery? Why done various “forms” like a Proteus manipulating letters and texts not only in the name of “Ignatius” but also other luminaries like “Paul,” “John” and various other “fellow workers” when Polycarp himself was “sure not to enjoy the praise”? Could it be that a man was that devoted to the Church that his forgeries could be see as being done out of “love” for its apostles? Could such a thing still viewed today as thing worthy of praise even today?
Whatever the case, Lightfoot while unable to recognize the pattern of forgery in the case of his study of Polycarp, manages to “picks up the sense” when he gets around to examining his “double” in the figure of Lucian’s “stranger.” According to him Lucian’s work “caricatures the progress of Ignatius through Asia Minor.” In other words, he sees the same phenomenon we just examined but views Ignatius as the real person. The “stranger” is only a satirical tool imitating the supposedly authentic life of the Church Father whose name means “burning one.”
According to Lightfoot “there is very strong reason for believing that Lucian has drawn his picture, at least in part, from the known circumstances of Ignatius’ history.” But this is utterly absurd! The parallels we have demonstrated between the “Polycarp the stranger” and “Peregrinus” now immediately shatter any believability whatsoever in the Ignatian canon.
While Lightfoot is certain that Ignatian epistles stood as the authentic background to the charlatan described in Lucian’s work we now certainly know better. He is correct in seeing the reference to the falsified canon in Morte but his faith in the Catholic canon sends him off in a hopeless task of defending the authenticity of Ignatius. He reminds us of a researcher who is so incensed that stones can’t float that he blames the water for the problem.
Similarly his opponent Killen who rightly wants to deny the authenticity of the canon is similarly distracted by his love for the apostolic Fathers. He attacks Lightfoot’s employment of Morte to prove the historical veracity of the Ignatian epistles saying “Peregrinus” begins his life by killing his father and “dies like a madman and yet we are asked to believe that Lucian has thus sketched the history of an Apostolic Father!”
What none of these scholars before me has figured out of course is that Polycarp's Letter to the Philippians is necessarily a part of this reworking effort. Remember Lucian doesn't say that 'the letter writing campaign which was initiated after the death Polycarp/Peregrinus was on behalf of a third party (i.e. Ignatius).' No the inference here is that whoever was working immediately after the death of Polycarp/Peregrinus, that person was reformulating letters in the name of Polycarp/Peregrinus.
Now of course all the Patristic experts would see this and chuckle to themselves seeing this as an example of how the pagan writer 'proves his unreliability' because the Ignatian corpus was not a collection of letters of Polycarp but Ignatius. Yet this is exactly where I see things in a completely different light.
If we read the Passing of Peregrinus carefully there is clearly a sense that Polycarp/Peregrinus wanted to die a 'fiery' death. The name Ignatius (or Nuronos as it is preserved in Syriac) implies the same thing about Ignatius. The question now becomes whether we can prove that the Ignatian Corpus was developed from earlier material where Polycarp was 'Ignatius,' where Polycarp was originally identified as the fiery one and that in fact Irenaeus developed the two names (viz. 'Polycarp' and 'Ignatius') into two separate characters in order to avoid future generations from identifying Polycarp as Lucian's 'Stranger.'
If this can be proved we at last be certain that it was Irenaeus who reshaped and edited the original Letter to the Philippians, and by inference the gospel reference and the gospel of Polycarp. This is all very exciting don't you think ...
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."